Chapter 74 Higher Law - 1

By the time I came home through the woods with a string of fish and rod in tow, it was completely dark and I felt a strange, wild joy at catching a glimpse of a woodchuck stalking across my path Trembling, I was so tempted to grab it and swallow it alive, not because I was hungry at the time, but because it represented wildness.Once or twice, when I was living on the lake, I found myself running through the woods like a half-starved hound, seeking with a strange wantonness some flesh to devour, any flesh I could devour. go down.Some of the wildest sights became somehow familiar.What I discovered within me, and continue to discover, is that I have an instinct for a higher life, or an exploration of the spiritual life, as many people have felt, but I also have an instinct for primal ranks and wildness The instinct of life, both of which I respect.I love the wild as much as I love the good.There is something wild and adventurous about fishing that makes me love it.Sometimes I would like to live savagely, to pass my days more like a beast.Perhaps it is because I fished and hunted at a very young age that I have an intimate connection with nature.Fishing and hunting introduce us very early to the wild landscapes and place us there otherwise at that age it would be impossible to get acquainted with them.Fishermen, hunters, woodcutters, etc., spend their whole lives in the wilderness and forests. In a special sense, they are already a part of nature. They are more suitable for observing nature during their work intervals than poets and philosophers. , because the latter always observe with a certain purpose.Nature is not afraid to show herself to them.The traveler is naturally a hunter on the prairies, a trapper in Missouri and upper Columbia, and a fisherman in St. Mary's Falls.But the man who is merely a traveler gets only second-hand incomplete knowledge and is a poor authority.What interests us most is when scientific papers report to us that we have discovered something through practice or instinct. Only such reports really belong to human beings, or record human experience.

Some say that the Yankees have little entertainment, because they have few public holidays, and do not have as many games for men and children as in England.This is wrong, for the more primitive and solitary pastimes of hunting and fishing have not yet given way to those games in our country.Nearly every New England boy of my day carried a shotgun between the ages of ten and fourteen, and his hunting and fishing lands were less delimited than those of the English aristocracy, and even more so than those of the savages. Much wider.So it's no surprise that he doesn't often play in public places.The current situation is already changing, not because of the increase in population, but because of the gradual decrease of prey. Perhaps the hunters have become good friends of the animals being hunted, and the Society for the Protection of Animals is no exception.

Besides, when I'm at the lake, I sometimes fish, just for a change.I do fish out of necessity, like the first fisherman.Although I oppose fishing in the name of humanity, it is all a lie, which belongs to the category of my philosophy more than the category of my feelings.Here I speak only of fishing, for I have had a different opinion of birding for a long time, and sold my gun before I came to the woods.Not because I am crueler than others, but because I don't feel that I have any compassion.I pity neither the fish nor the bait worm.It has become a habit.As for fowling, during my last years with a gun my excuse was that I was studying ornithology, and that I sought only rare or novel birds.But I confess that I now have a better way of doing ornithology than this.Your habit of observing the birds so closely and carefully is enough for me to cancel the shotgun.Yet, however much one may object on grounds of humanity, I am compelled to wonder whether there are any equally worthwhile amusements in place of hunting; Always answer, yes,—for I remember this is the best part of my education,—let them be hunters, though at first they are only athletes, and in the end, if possible, they are good hunters, Then they will know hereafter that there are not enough birds or beasts in the wilderness to supply them with hunting, here or anywhere.So far, I still agree with the nun that Qiao Yu wrote. She said:

"I haven't heard the old hen say that hunters are not holy people."